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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The title of this post is based on the title of a story that appeared on the Stuff website over the weekend ('Catholics Tell Gays To Ditch Sex'), that I have changed to more accurately reflect the teaching of the Church.

The story is concerning the new video The Third Way that I posted about a few weeks ago, and reports how the Catholic Bishop of Auckland, Patrick Dunn, now wants to use the video in teaching the position of the Church on homosexuality.

The story begins -

Gay people should give up sex if they want to be Catholics, according to a documentary supported by the New Zealand Catholic church.

A video endorsed by Auckland Bishop Patrick Dunn says homosexual sex is a sin and those who are experiencing same-sex attraction are encouraged to "love God" instead.

But the gay community says the doco is "horrifying" and an insidious attempt to make it seem the church is more tolerant towards homosexuals.

The Third Way, billed as the church's new approach to homosexuality, tells fellow Catholics not to hate those living with same-sex attraction, or SSA, but not to affirm their activities either.

If gay people choose to be Catholic, the documentary says, they need to stop leading a "gay lifestyle", and practise chastity.

Now just to recap, the Catholic Church does not consider being homosexual a sin, but it does condemn homosexual acts as being sinful, as the above reports. Later on in the article, they report on what gay Labour MP Louisa Wall has to say about the video -

Labour MP Louisa Wall, who introduced the same-sex marriage bill, said the movement away from complete condemnation of gay people within the church was positive.

But she said it was difficult to get past the fact that the film promoted acceptance of a gay or lesbian person as Catholic only if they didn't have sex.

Again, what struck me the most about some of the wording of the article is that critics of the Church's position do not think it is fair that the Church requires that homosexuals not have sex.

The teaching of the Church is that any sex out of marriage (what used to be called 'fornication') is sinful. To be fair, this is also mentioned in the Stuff article. The teaching in the video though, is not a "new approach". Just check the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

This might seem obvious, or it might not, but the Church is not really telling homosexuals to "ditch sex" or "give up sex". Persons who are the same gender cannot engage in sex in the first place. It is simply not an option. By this of course I mean genital sexual intercourse, or coitus. You cannot be told to give up something that is not possible for you to do in the first place. Perhaps you might say it is just semantics, but I think it is important to get across exactly what the Church is saying.

So, being that sex (coitus) is not at all an option for a couple of the same gender, the teaching of the Church is that Catholic homosexuals not engage in 'gay sex' such as sodomy or other gay sexual conduct because these are perversions of the sex act, are harmful, and lesson the dignity of the human person.